Until I Burst
by Hoperise
Summary: Two-shot, set before Season 3. Charlie used to rue the fact that he did his FBI casework within a bubble. But after getting too close to a particularly gruesome sex trafficking case, the bubble doesn't look so bad. Now, if only Don can talk him off the roof.
1. Until I Burst

**NUMB3RS: UNT1l 1 BUR5T**

Setting: Between Season 2 Finale and Season 3 Premiere  
Genre: Drama  
Summary: Charlie used to rue the fact that he did his FBI casework within a bubble. But after getting too close to a particularly gruesome sex trafficking case, the bubble doesn't look so bad. Now, if only Don can talk him off the roof…  
Warning: This fictional piece contains frank discussion and description of human trafficking. Real statistics and facts included, though any resemblance to actual cases is purely coincidental. Also: booze, abuse, and a number of uglies.

* * *

_Who's in the bunker, who's in the bunker?_

_I've seen too much; I haven't seen enough_

_You haven't seen enough_

_I laugh until my head comes off._

_Women and children first,_

_and children first,_

_and children.._

* * *

He was suffocating.

Toxic exhaust from the fossil fuels of an estimated 2.5 million registered vehicles, accumulating for the past 80 years and light pollution from 3.82 million individuals, including their residences, workplaces, educational facilities, recreational facilities, and various associated structures all contributed to the heavy blanket of smog that draped over Orange County and settled above Pasadena.

Perched on the rooftop of the second story with his feet dangling above the first, Charlie stared into the murky black and took a low, shuddering breath. To his knowledge, his lungs were functioning properly. And yet, he still felt as though he couldn't get enough air.

If only the stars could pierce the insulating barrier and let in a breath of crisp, clean oxygen from beyond the haze. If only he could reach through the smog and touch the luminaries beyond. If only he could reach beyond the filth and reclaim that which was pure, and beautiful.

He let out a dignified snort and shook his curly head. Now he knew that he was drunk. The notion that a man could reach out and make physical contact with a blazing ball of hydrogen… let alone that the presence of stars in a night sky would result in more efficient respiration.

That irrational line of thought, combined with the mostly-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker nestled in the gutter, lent some credibility to the probability that he'd had a few too many.

Yet even as some part of his vaguely intrigued mind calculated the amount of ounces that he'd consumed in the last four point five hours as compared to the amount of time it would take his liver to metabolize the alcohol, he rationalized that if he were still able to do that math subconsciously and make decisions based upon the data, he wasn't drunk enough.

For the first time in his adult life – hell, for the first time in accessible memory, Charlie just wanted to stop thinking. About anything.

Anything that might lead his eidetic memory back to twenty-eight women, fourteen adolescents, and six_ children_ contained in eight cells that couldn't have been larger than his office's storage closet…

And that set him off again, calculating the square footage of his closet and imagining how the women had been packed in, forced to share that space daily for months, perhaps years, in between designated 'shifts,' being exploited between 10 and 40 times a day…

The scent of human misery came rolling back and his stomach turned again. He leaned back against the shingles and rode the wave of nausea as it threatened to wring out his insides once more. Folding his hands behind his head to ease the pressure on his lungs, Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the humid night air.

But there just wasn't enough oxygen.

Just like back in the cellar. He was suffocating.

He wasn't supposed to be there. After the sniper at Banitek Towers, the only crime scenes Don allowed him on were scenes where the bodies were already cooling, the bad guys miles away.

No one expected him to wander into the cellar.

There was too much bustle going on with all the agents on the main floor. His calculations led them directly to that run-down apartment building. He was certain that the data meant their missing agent would be there – and he was right.

Only, they found about 47 more women on top of that.

It was only a fluke that he had gotten lost in thought and stumbled through the false wall. But once he was in there...

_Oh God, there were _children_ in that pit… Vanakkam, saan ang Raquel? Stie cineva Raquel? No no no this can't be happening ¿C-Cuántas chicas? Yo te ayudare – a-attendrez, attendrez, la police va venir…_

He could still hear the unforgiving rattle of chains as he attempted to break the doors open. Locked. Feet pounded against damp cement, past the scattered papers that had slipped from his fingers without a second thought. He tried every language he could muddle through to see if anyone knew where the agent was, but the only responses he got were dripping water and unseeing eyes.

And then he saw her, the face that matched the photo he'd had pinned to the board in his office for weeks.

_Agent Desoto, Raquel, can you hear me? Infected lacerations, contusions matching the hand size of a large adult male probably thirties, forties. Wait, those prints don't - Those are multiple handprints… at least three pairs. From the discoloration they're only a few days old. How is she going to tell her husband?  
_  
Brown eyes snapped open and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. He leaned forwards, putting his head between his knees.

_Breathe. Just breathe. Get a hold of yourself. My God, this one can't be more than ten…_

A steady hand fell on his shoulder, pulling him back from the edge. "Easy, buddy. This isn't the greatest spot for brooding."

Light spilled through the open attic window, illuminating the concern on one side of his brother's face and casting the other side into shadow.

Charlie twisted his expression into a vague facsimile of a grin. "_Meus carus frater! _Have you come to keep me?"

Symbolism, symbolism. English had always been his worst subject, but the notion of the two-faced man could be traced back to Janus himself. Fascinated by the interplay of light and dark across the visage of his troubled older sibling, childlike, Charlie couldn't help but stretch out his left hand towards Don's face to see if it were real. His fingers encountered warm flesh, but his presence cast its own shadows and threw the man deeper into darkness.

_Light from the hallway spilled into the alcove, and too-many sets of eyes peered back at him from within. Oh God, oh God, how could there be _more_?_

Don returned the smile hesitantly, but the worry lines remained solid upon his forehead as he tugged Charlie's hand from his face. "Yeah, I'm here to keep you, alright. Keep you from falling off the roof. Charlie, what are you doing up here?"

Making a sweeping gesture at the night sky that put him only slightly off-balance (okay, perhaps slightly more than that), Charlie replied heartily, "Stargazing!"

He thought he was pretty hilarious.

Don did not appear to share that opinion.

The agent's smile faded somewhat, his grip increasing as he drew Charlie back from the edge of the roof. "Well, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be up here on your own. Especially not while, uh, plastered."

Charlie scoffed. "I'm not alone, bro. I brought a friend." He reached for the rest of the scotch, but was startled when it disappeared from his grasp and suddenly manifested in Don's.

"How did you get a hold of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue? Charlie, you barely drink!"

_A warm haze wafted towards him from the hall - the ferrous scent of blood, and beneath that, the smell of human filth and decay left to fester in the summer heat. His stomach wrenched suddenly and he had to leave – NOW – but Don, he had to get Don…_

Showing off a brilliant smile that made women across three continents weak at the knees, Charlie shrugged. "Always was a fast learner."

Don set the bottle back in the gutter, turning his face away from the light. "Yeah, but 'Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism 101' is one class I'd rather you flunk."

Charlie rolled his eyes. "Hello, pot. I'm kettle. Have we met?"

"Very funny, Chuck. You know we've been looking for you for like an hour, right? There's a lot of people worried about you."

The silence was pregnant, which led to confusing questions about the paternity of the moment.

Bizarre metaphors and the English language aside, Charlie shook his head and watched as the lights in the garden below chased each other in dizzy circles. "S'not me they should be worried about."

_Some part of his brain expected screaming. Fear. Anger. Defiance. But all he could see in the eyes of those broken girls was resignation. Despair._

Next to him, Don heaved a sigh (where did it go? Into the graveyard of exasperation and brotherly anxiety, he surmised) and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Charlie, I'm sorry that I put you in that situation. You should never have seen what you did…"

Shaking his head again, Charlie interrupted, "It's not just the seeing. It's the knowing. It's so tempting to detach the human element from statistics, but I now have an intimate comprehension of both. You see a couple of kids in a room, I see six girls between ten and fourteen with an average of 25 customers per night, and if each visit is limited to 30 minutes than that means that a child is being raped for a minimum of twelve hours a day, every day, for months on end."

His mind spun through the calculations faster than he could process the horror behind their meaning, though his imagination strove to keep the pace. His mouth was dry and his breath came in gasps as he sought the words to express his anguish. "They _sold_ these children, Don; what I fail to comprehend is that there are people who are buying!"

"Yeah, man. I know. I get it, I really do. But thanks to you, we caught the monsters in charge. We got Desoto back, and the rest of those girls are going to get a second chance." Conviction burned in Don's voice; akin to the burning behind Charlie's eyes.

He laughed, a helpless, strangled sound that might have been a sob. "But they aren't the only ones, are they? Of 30 million modern-day slaves worldwide, at least 4 million of them are sold specifically for sex. I see the figures and I-I can't stop myself from breaking it down into race, creed, geographic and age distribution. This is an epidemic of cascading human depravity, and I _understand_ it."

His voice broke for a moment before carrying on, moved by the bubbling current of emotion and outrage, "And now, for me the figures now have names and faces. Lakshmi and Bonita and Suree… I hate it, I hate that I can look at any one of those women and children, and know how much she has been violated this week."

He looked to Don with hands open and eyes wide. "Does that make sense why – when I know, when I know these things and can't stop myself knowing and calculating the details of the torture that destroyed them – does it make sense why I'd want to just… stop thinking?"

Charlie's face was streaked with a pain not his own as he ran a hand through permanently unruly curls, voice cracking as he whispered, "Just for a short while. Just for a moment. I can't…"

_Men with guns rushed into the halls and the wail of sirens on the way. Hang on, sweetheart. Help is coming. We're going to get you out._

From somewhere in the black, garden lights swirled in Don's eyes, the same shade as their Mom's. "Yeah, that does make sense. You know what? You should take a couple days off. Go hiking. Forget about cases, forget about classes, just clear your head. Then come back to the city with a fresh approach to the whole, you know, saving the world thing. But we're gonna need you back, Charlie. Because every moment we spend ignoring these girls – and guys too, for that matter – their chances get smaller and smaller."

Don took a sip from the bottle and they were quiet for a time, listening to the symphony of crickets in the garden and the distant heartbeat of the city. "No one tells you about that coming into a job like this, but it's our duty to remember. We're the only ones standing between a force that exploits them and a public that has forgotten them. We stand for victims, we remember the victims, and we tell their stories so others will turn and join us in the fight."

Beside him, his brother inhaled slowly and turned his face into the light once more. "In the meantime, you need to tell that brain of yours to shut up and understand that you did a good thing today. Today was a win. Drink it in, learn from it, and figure out what went right so we can pull off a win next time, too. But mostly, tonight is for savoring. We got our agent back and rescued nearly fifty women. Freedom is a pretty good cause for celebration."

"And for the others… well, that's what tomorrow is for. Tomorrow we try again. You don't change a huge statistic all at once; you gotta start with individuals. Tomorrow we start new with the people in front of us. But you can't forget to savor the win." Don smiled again, a slighter grin, but this time the lines around his eyes crinkled gently with his big-brotherly expression that had the power to scare away every monster under the bed.

Scrubbing his face with his hands, Charlie took a long, shuddering breath (vital capacity of adult male lungs typically around 4800 mL O2; the sum of tidal volume, inspiratory reserve volume, and expiratory reserve volume – they might call it inspiration but he felt no more hopeful than before) and nodded. "Savor the win, huh? You're probably right."

"Well, it's gotta happen every so often."

"Yeah, about as often as Halley's Comet coming around."

"Shut up." Don nudged him good-naturedly.

Charlie chuckled dryly and flopped back against the roof. "Hiking sounds like a good idea. I haven't gone hiking since – well, since we went for the McHugh case."

His brother leaned back on his elbows, scoffing. "That doesn't count. Tracking a fugitive through the badlands? Man, you gotta go all in. What do you say we get out of here, get out of the valley and climb Mount Whitney like we used to talk about?"

The sparkle slowly returning to his gaze, Charlie replied, "Ah, but is the infamous Don Eppes capable of taking a day off?"

"Hey, I've had some leave building up. David and Megan can handle the office for a while. You need a partner if you wanna go tackle the mountain. I'm your man – on one condition, though."

"What's that?"

"You get a damn haircut."

He laughed for real this time, long and loud. And this time, when he caught his breath afterwards, he was truly inspired.

* * *

_Here I'm allowed_

_Everything all of the time…_

_Here I'm allowed_

_Everything all of the time…_

* * *

All statistics come from Not For Sale, a 501(c) 3 non-profit based out of California with the mission of re-abolishing slavery, of creating a world where no one is for sale. For more information on sex trafficking, there's a fantastic documentary called 'Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.'

Lyrics: Radiohead's "Idioteque." For extra credit, search YouTube for Eddy Lin's "Theif DRIME" video to the same song and see the drama they wrote for it.

Forgive any messy translations. Some is from my experience. Some is from my good friend Google.

Tamil: Hello

Hmong: Where is Raquel?

Czech: Does anyone know Raquel?

Spanish: How many girls? I will help.

French: Wait, wait. The police will come.

Latin: My dear brother.

**Don't write the story. Live the story.**


	2. When the End is All I See

**NUMB3RS: UNT1l 1 BUR5T**

Setting: Nestled between the Season 2 Finale and Season 3 Premiere.  
Genre: Drama, Family  
Summary: Charlie used to rue the fact that he did his FBI casework within a bubble. But after getting too close to a particularly gruesome sex trafficking case, the bubble doesn't look so bad. Now, if only Don can talk him off the roof…  
Warning: This fictional piece contains frank discussion and description of human trafficking. Real statistics and facts included, though any resemblance to actual cases is purely coincidental. Also: booze, abuse, and a number of uglies.

* * *

_What if I lose my fire?_

_What if I lose my will to fight,_

_Through the night?_

_What if I wake one day,_

_And find the whole world's changed –_

_You and I don't see eye to eye?_

_Would you just leave and walk away?_

_Would you leave me all alone?_

_Would you just leave and walk away?_

_Don't go…_

* * *

This couldn't be the end.

There had to be more – another lead to chase down or bank account to trace. Another variable, perhaps something Charlie missed. Another snitch whose cage he could rattle into squeezing out a second location.

But with three bodies rapidly cooling and his agents completing their second search of the premises, Don was scrambling for options and coming up empty. All the evidence, all the data pointed them to this run-down apartment building.

She had to be here.

The standoff with the gatekeepers had quickly spiraled out of control. David was nursing a minor concussion from his dive out of the line of fire. Colby had taken two shots center mass, his vest the only reason his ribcage was cracked instead of shattered.

He had two agents down, another still missing, and no one breathing who could tell him why.

Desoto was with the LA Task Force on Human Trafficking. She had gone undercover, trying to get enough dirt on the prime movers to make a serious dent in their network. She knew the risks. In fact, the slight Latina had volunteered for the position.

Don had never met the woman, but five minutes with her personnel file and he wanted to buy her a round for sheer bravado.

Yet the problem remained. With an empty apartment building and three dead perps, the trail had gone cold.

Don felt the wave of adrenaline began to fade as his sympathetic nervous system noted the lack of immediate threat. Fatigue and tension, old friends from too many late nights and too many dead ends, clamored for his attention.

Eyes like mahogany caught the sluggish activity from behind his shades. He watched his despondent team shake their heads and sigh as they combed through the scene for anything they might have missed the first time around.

Brow furrowing, Don folded his hands behind his head to still the trembling. It was happening right in front of his face. He had seen it over and over again – the case file would slip down the priority list as new cases came in, until at last the file was written off as unsolved. Another family left in devastation. Another criminal free to walk the streets.

And the girls that Desoto had literally sold herself for…

Don closed his eyes.

_Why don't we care about these girls until one of their customers get sick? _

Megan's words.

_It's economics. As long the demand persists, someone will step up to provide the supply. _

Charlie's words.

_You can't save the world. _

His dad's words.

Maybe he couldn't… but someone had to try.

A familiar voice bellowed his name. It was a tortured sound, as though the word was being torn from their throat.

Don's eyes snapped open.

"Charlie."

An explosion of activity and time slipped away in the blur of renewed vigor. Images passed before his eyes, one blending into another in nonsensical order, like sorting through a jumbled box of Polaroids.

The overpowering scent of dried blood and rusty cages. Kaleidoscope bruises on silken skin. The salt of tears washing away layers of grime and make-up.

His brother, staggering from the cellar and finding a quiet corner to empty the contents of his stomach.

Whispered promises to an unconscious form. "It's over, Desoto. We're gonna get you home."

But it wasn't over – not yet, at least.

They had forty-seven victims of varying ages and ethnicities, all either upstairs or on their way to the hospital. Megan was with the five little girls, but even those without visible injuries were still too traumatized to speak just yet.

Down in the cellar, Don was supervising as Collins and Morris of the Evidence Response Team began their documentation of the concealed room. He took a deep, centering breath as they set up the floodlights, providing enough light to illuminate the crime scene.

He turned his face to the back wall, shielding his eyes as the back corners were exposed for the first time in who knew how long.

That's when he noticed the spare room.

Drawing his service weapon, Don signaled the agents behind him and slid to the edge of the shabby doorframe. His pulse quickened as the possibilities flew through his mind. How many assailants could be lying in wait behind the door? How long would they have been in hiding, hoping to go unnoticed until too late?

Mouthing a countdown to Collins, he summoned his strength and burst down the door with an almighty kick. The frail wood splintered under his boot. A sickly odor wafted through the door, causing his eyes to water.

A figure shifted in the darkness, obscured by his shadow. Collins produced a flashlight and cast the beam about the room, tiny motes of dust swirling in the air as light streamed into a place abandoned to the black.

In the middle of the cramped room, there was a rickety cot. Bound hand and foot to the bedpost was a quivering child of central Asian descent, her pupils infinitesimal specks in a sea of brown.

Words escaped him for the umpteenth time that day. They had almost missed this one. Could there be other girls, hidden away in other parts of the building?

As Collins cleared the rest of the room, the senior agent hastily forced his weapon away and sank to his knees at the bedside.

"It's okay, it's okay. FBI - we're the good guys. We're going to get you out."

The uneven hitch of her chest caught his eye as he hacked through her bonds with a pocketknife. Her hair was matted with sweat, her clothing ragged and torn, and the mattress was smeared with her filth. Her expression flickered with pain. Muscles spasmed along her jaw line, and yet somehow the little girl's face was lit up with an impossible smile.

"I know. I say to them, help will come. They do not believe me." Her voice was a whisper, lilting with a soft accent as she struggled with the foreign tongue. Her breath came in short gasps.

Opening his mouth to reply, Don could think of nothing to say. He was used to weeping girls, incoherent screams, stunned silence – the unnerving calm threw him for a loop. In the distance, Collins radioed upstais for a medic.

The girl weakly placed her hand on his. Sensing his struggle, she tried again, "What is your name?"

He cupped the tiny hand with his larger one, careful of the rope burns around her frail wrists. Was she attempting to comfort him? "Don. My name is Don. What is your name?"

"Dahn." She experimented with the sound. "My name is Reshma." Her eyes were shy, but her grin was infectious. "I am glad to meet you."

Dipping his head slightly as her grip on his arm tightened, Don let out a slightly hysterical laugh at the absurdity. "I'm glad to meet you, too." Glad to meet you alive.

His gaze flickered across the cramped room and the thin mattress, soggy and smeared with excrement. "We have to go now. Reshma, can you walk?"

For the first time, the little girl frowned. She bit her lip and averted her eyes as she fought for the right words. "I have no… I-I can not-" Vocabulary failing, she simply lifted her arms towards him.

Right. Decision time. Without another word, Don got to his feet and scooped her up as gently as possible, his heart breaking as felt her tremble beneath his hands. She laid her head against his chest and he could feel her forehead blazing through his polo.

Quick strides led him out of the room, down the hall, past a horror-struck Morris and up the stairs to the main level. Don's face was set in determined lines as he dutifully ignored the gazes of curious parties until he had deposited the precious package on a gurney beside waiting paramedics.

Megan appeared at his side, face pale as the same question he'd asked himself manifest on her lips. How had they overlooked this one?

She'd been busy with the other victims. Rationally, Don knew it wasn't her fault. But he couldn't keep the growl from his voice as he muttered quietly, "Check the whole place again. We leave no one. We miss nothing."

Reshma clung to his hand through the preliminary exam. While it looked like she had no problem with Don, the approach of one of the paramedics, a blond male, sent her into hysterics. Her labored breathing worsened and she began to cough violently, protesting vigorously in a language he didn't comprehend, until her coughing began to produce blood.

That was how Don found himself at the hospital hours later, sitting by a different bedside. Eleven o'clock found him wrapping up the preliminary round of incident reports. The agent had set up an impromptu command center amongst the agents posted to guard the floor containing vics from the trafficking bust.

He set his clipboard down on his lap and let out a long breath, massaging his temples with one hand. The other hand was entangled in the sleepy grasp of his tiny friend. Reshma fallen into a fitful sleep after the procedure. An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, antibiotics waging war on the infection plaguing her lower respiratory tract.

Don hadn't missed the irony. Even though she had been rescued from captivity, she still could die from the tuberculosis.

Fresh from a series of booster shots, his shoulder throbbed in tandem with his aching head. The tide of weariness had risen once more, rolling over him and settling deep in his bones. The monotony of forms and procedures helped him to categorize details of the day's events. Nevertheless, Don couldn't stop his thoughts from lingering on the cabinet by his desk that overflowed with these form. As soon as this case was finished there would be half a dozen more to take its place.

A tidal wave of despair crashed over him, leaving his confidence floundering in its wake. He was adrift at sea, clinging to hope as a life preserver with a white-knuckled grip. But it was so _hard_ to hang on and he was running out of strength.

He was slipping…

What difference did today make if he would face the same fight tomorrow?

What did it matter?

Don closed his eyes.

_An old man was walking down the beach after a storm. Overnight, the waves had washed thousands of starfish onto the shore. The tide was out and the sun was coming up, and the starfish were going to dry up and die. _

_Now as he was walking along, he saw a little boy pick up a starfish, look at it, and throw it back in the sea. The boy did it over and over again – picked up a starfish, looked at it, and threw it into the sea._

_The old man was surprised, so he walked up to the boy and said, "Little boy, what are you doing? You can't save these starfish – there's just too many of them. The beach goes on for miles and miles. There's no way you can make a difference."_

_The little boy picked up another starfish, looked at it, and threw it back in the sea. Without looking at the old man, he replied, "It made a difference to that one."_

His mother's voice this time, echoing back from years and years ago, when he had been discouraged by bruised knuckles and a black eye, when he first questioned what good it was to step up for the little guy if it meant getting stepped on.

Her eyes had softened and she'd given him a mysterious smile, then sat him down and told him the story of the Star Thrower.

For the briefest instant he could almost smell her vanilla and lavender perfume; almost feel a gentle hand brush against that spot on the back of his neck where he bore the most tension – that spot her fingers had always found almost instinctively.

His eyes flew open and he sucked in a shuddering breath. Don set aside the stack of files and stood up, pacing the length of the room with a sudden burst of energy.

Someone more scientific than he might have hypothesized that recalling the story had triggered sensations from his olfactory and tactile memory.

But real or imagined, for a brief instant he felt his mother's presence.

She would have been so unspeakably proud of him – of him and Charlie both, working together to bust the traffickers and set all these women free.

What would she have said, if he went home and told her what the two of them had done today? Would she say anything at all, or would she simply look at him with that smile that put the sunrise to shame?

That thought resonated within and spread to fill his aching body with curious warmth. Looking at Reshma with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, his eyes prickled with moisture and Don found it hard to keep the grin from his face.

He wasn't writing her off just yet. She was one stubborn little starfish, with the audacity to hope in the face of adversity. If she had enough momentum behind her, if he had enough strength to launch her into the right environment, she would make it.

And in the heart of the storm, a hand reached down and pulled him up from the depths.

On the bedside table, his phone vibrated.

Don flipped it open to see that he had missed a series of texts from his dad.

_Charlie's missing. Come home._

He stiffened as he recalled his brother's too-pale face after discovering the cellar.

It looked like Charlie could use a hand up, too.

* * *

_Won't you stay with me?_

_Oh, won't you stay with me?_

_When the end is all I see,_

_Oh, won't you stay with me?_

* * *

Lyrics: "What If," by Arrows and Sound

The parable is a paraphrase from the 1969 essay "The Star Thrower," by Loren Eiseley.

**Don't write the story. Live the story.**


End file.
